CLASSICAL MUSIC; A Young Conductor Starts at the Top

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Some conductors have established solid careers and then sunk without a trace. Franz Welser-Moest is different: he has risen without a trace.

This little-known, inexperienced 31-year-old Austrian has suddenly been thrust into the center of London's musical life and now finds himself emblazoned on the international scene. After a brief relationship, the London Philharmonic has appointed him music director, with powers that such eminent predecessors as Klaus Tennstedt, Sir Georg Solti and Bernard Haitink never possessed. Mr. Welser-Moest had previously directed only a youth orchestra, and orchestras in Norrkoping, Sweden, and Winterthur, Switzerland, hardly international centers of music-making. Now he is conducting the London Philharmonic on a world tour, ending with concerts on Wednesday at Avery Fisher Hall and on Thursday at Carnegie Hall. And this fall he will lead the orchestra into a much-prized residency at the Royal Festival Hall in London's South Bank Center.

Mr. Welser-Moest first appeared on the podium in London only six years ago, but some London Philharmonic players were already claiming after his first appearances with them that he ranked among the greatest conductors. Ask them now, and they are fully supportive but a little more cautious in their assessments. Ask him if he suffers from having unreasonably high expectations heaped on him, and he laughs knowingly.

You might expect a conductor in such a position to be ruthlessly ambitious, smoothly confident and dismissive of criticism. But though Mr. Welser-Moest is indeed precise about his aims, eloquent in expressing them and diplomatic in criticizing others, he is clearly an idealist at heart and takes seriously both criticism and advice. At his habitual London haunt, the Savoy Hotel, he is relaxed but intense, his large rimless glasses magnifying his eyes so that every sentence he speaks is given added weight.

He sees changes in musical life against the background of cultural and political life. He believes that his role as a conductor must include speaking out against injustice. His two great heroes in this century, he said, are Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

An occasional touch of naivete in Mr. Welser-Moest's conversation betrays his youth, and there is a touch of insecurity, too. But then his background is so strange as to be almost bizarre. His youth was spent conventionally training to be a violinist, and he flirted with conducting. In 1978, he was badly injured in a car accident and could no longer play the violin. It was to be conducting or nothing. He found he could do it, and enjoyed it.

Success followed quickly, thanks to the intervention of someone who has had a major influence on Mr. Welser-Moest's life and career. Baron Andreas von Bennigsen, an aristocrat from a Hanoverian family raised in Switzerland, spotted the young conductor and adopted him -- first informally, as his agent, then formally, as his father. For Baron von Bennigsen, Mr. Welser-Moest was the son he had never had and the great musician he had always wanted to create.

"Yes, I was privileged," Mr. Wel ser-Moest said. "But it has not stopped me wanting to work. I think orchestral musicians today respect preparation and good rehearsal, but what they really want is inspiration and a sense of atmosphere in the concert. Yet so few conductors can produce it."

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Mr. Welser-Moest's success story with the London Philharmonic is perhaps a cautionary tale about the rarity of conducting talent today. A last-minute engagement, on the recommendation of an agent who had never seen him conduct, brought him to London for a Mozart Requiem, and the critic of The London Times was greatly impressed. From that occasion, much followed. And EMI's espousal of Mr. Welser-Moest two years ago undoubtedly helped seal the links between him and the orchestra, since in London recording contracts are all-important for the major orchestras' economic survival.

But the matter of the South Bank residency entailed even higher stakes. In the rivalry for the position, the Philharmonia Orchestra offered strong artistic credentials but a music director, Giuseppe Sinopoli, whose music-making was widely loathed by London critics. The London Philharmonic countered with a record of proven commercial success and the prospect of a new music director with extensive powers over personnel and artistic policy.

To find that newly powerful music director the orchestra could have turned back to a major figure associated with it: Mr. Solti, Mr. Haitink, even Mr. Tennstedt, had he been healthy enough. But each would have made great demands and might have taken artistic policy in unforeseen directions. Mr. Welser-Moest, as the orchestra's bullish managing director, John Willan, admitted, was more malleable. Or to put it more positively, he would be able to collaborate with South Bank management on a fresh artistic policy for the orchestra.

Mr. Welser-Moest insists that plans for the South Bank are going swimmingly, and enthusiastically describes possibilities for a 1993-94 season featuring unusual combinations of music, including non-Western elements. Do his plans imply that the traditional role of the orchestra is dead? "No, definitely not," he said. "We are living in a changing culture, and I want my orchestra to be the leader in responding to that change. We may fail, but we must try and create something new."

Still, the contemporary repertory is a bit of a problem for Mr. Welser-Moest, since his real sympathies seem not to extend past Orff's "Carmina Burana," of 1936, and music by his own teacher Balduin Sulzer. This may make development of ideas with the adventurous South Bank problematic, but Mr. Welser-Moest insists that even though he may not appreciate all contemporary music, the orchestra should play it. He will promote the currently active "Third Viennese School" of H. K. Gruber and Kurt Schwertsik, and the orchestra will do a Berio season.

Mr. Welser-Moest remains, perhaps, a prophet without honor in his own capital city of Vienna. His appearances at the Vienna State Opera have been limited, and the Vienna Philharmonic has not been among the orchestras rushing to engage him. But he has recently had considerable success in the United States, with orchestras as diverse as the St. Louis and Atlanta Symphonies and the New York Philharmonic. In fact, his growing involvement with American orchestras at a time when he is supposed to be increasingly committed to the London Philharmonic, may raise some eyebrows.

He recently changed agents. Previously his adoptive father dealt with agents around the world; now Mr. Welser-Moest has a single arrangement with I.M.G. Artists in New York. The reason, he said, was that the conflicting demands of the various agencies were driving him mad, and that I.M.G. had secured him important engagements in America. Since American orchestras have been quick to re-engage Mr. Welser-Moest, the new relationship bodes well for his career in the United States. But it may not bode entirely well for the London Philharmonic.

A version of this article appears in print on March 15, 1992, on Page 2002031 of the National edition with the headline: CLASSICAL MUSIC; A Young Conductor Starts at the Top. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe